PAX Impressions Incoming

This past weekend, from April 6th – April 9th, I had the great pleasure of representing TrueAchievements at this year’s PAX East convention in Boston, MA. For those of you unfamiliar with it, PAX East is possibly the largest convention dedicated to gaming on the East coast of the United States. On the first day of the convention, well over 15,000 people lined up to get in the doors before they opened at 10:00 AM. Throughout the weekend over 60,000 gamers, from table top to console and everything in between, passed through the doors and into a world where they could see some on their favorite games and chat with some of their iconic developers.

I’m going to recap some of what I saw on the show floor for you. In the interest of full disclosure, let me list some of the big games I did not get to see, due to long lines, panels, or just spending too much time chatting up those developers I could talk to. I waited in line for Lollipop Chainsaw, but was not able to get through it before I had to duck off for a panel. I did not see XCOM: Enemy Unknown, though if you listen to Major Nelson’s PAX East podcast, you can hear Stephen Toulouse’s very positive response. Another game mentioned positively in that podcast that I did not get to see was Aliens: Colonial Marines, though I can tell you the Podcast Panel very much approved of the way the game used familiar environments from the movie to build the landscape of the game.

The ten games that will be covered over the next couple of days are by no means meant to function as a 'best of' list for PAX, merely a quick impression after spending some hands-on time. What I can tell you all for sure is that we have a lot of exciting and awesome titles coming up in the future. It's a good time to be a gamer.

Michelle is the Assistant Manager of the Newshounds at TrueAchievements and has been a member of staff since 2010. When not contributing to gaming websites, she makes her living as a mild-mannered librarian. She can be compelled to play just about anything if there's a co-op component, and has been playing games with friends and siblings since the Atari 2600. As it's reportedly healthy to have hobbies outside of gaming, she also roots for some of the most difficult sporting franchises to root for, the New York Mets and New York Jets, but offsets that by rooting for the New Jersey Devils. She's also seen pretty much none of the movies you have, but she's working on that.